RELATED REPORTS

Table of contents:
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1. Goal

2. Explanation
3. Method

 

1. GOAL

 

These reports include our previous research and research conducted by other organizations that provided evidence of effectiveness of an intervention or area. Their goal is to provide another independent methodology when evaluating charity ideas and to create a compendium of sources that are relevant to a given topic. 

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2. EXPLANATION

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The related report section is a way for us to incorporate our old research reports alongside research conducted by external organizations. It would enable us to take into account independent evaluation and provide more robust information. Additionally, it provides a place where all sources are gathered to provide context and additional noneffectiveness-focused information. These reports may be specific to a single intervention or cover broader areas. This will vary in terms of how useful they are within our current research round. For example, our old research such as the Feed Fortification report should be predictive of an intervention’s potential and provides an overview for this category of interventions so will receive a high weight. External organizations’ reports such as GiveWell’s Intervention reports will also receive a high weight because they constitute very high-quality and robust research, whereas a DCP cost effectiveness analysis or our previous expert survey may be less relevant. These are assigned a lower weight because the DCP has historically been prone to error, and our expert survey will be slightly outdated and involve experts we have also contacted in this research round.

 

3. METHOD

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The methods for these reports will have a very wide range; we expect to create about twenty supporting reports over the year. Some examples of planned supporting reports include:
 

• Meta process-focused reports (like this one) explaining how we use CEAs and experts and how to narrow down ideas

• A deep look at mental health metrics and how we cross-compare subjective well-being and other methods

• Broad meta research reports such as a report on what heuristics can be used to determine promising cause areas quickly

• How to model speeding up progress vs changing trajectories 

We expect many ideas for reports such as these to come up throughout the process of researching ideas but only to have time to address the most important ones.

Supporting reports can be conducted at all stages of the research process and at different depths dependent on the importance and complexity of the object of the research. 

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4. PUBLISHING PLAN

 

Generally, a summary of related reports will be published in full in a format that is conducive to our blog. Reports will range from being a shortlist of existing evidence to a descriptive synthesis of all available information.